Glasgow - The leader of Scotland's Catholics has branded the Act of Settlement a "grubby little secret". Cardinal Thomas Winning called for the Act, which prohibits Catholics from ascending the British throne or marrying the heirs to the crown, to be repealed, saying yesterday it "shames our nation".
His comments come after a call by the Guardian for the Act to be abolished on the grounds it breaks the European Convention of Human Rights, which gives everyone freedom of religious expression. Cardinal Winning said in the Sunday Herald that the Act, which also bars illegitimate children and non-Christians from the succession, needed to be tackled "sooner rather than later".
